An Asymmetric Data Conversion Scheme based on Binary Tags

In distributed systems with homogeneous or heterogeneous computers, data generated on one machine might not always be used by another machine directly. For a particular data type, its endianness, size and padding situation cause incompatibility issue. Data conversion procedure is indispensable, especially in open systems. So far, there is no widely accepted data format standard in high performance computing community. Most time, programmers have to handle data formats manually. In order to achieve high programmability and efficiency in both homogeneous and heterogeneous open systems, a novel asymmetric binary-tag-based data conversion scheme (BinTag) is proposed to share data smoothly. Each data item carries one binary tag generated by BinTag's parser without much programmer's involvement. Data conversion only happens when it is absolutely necessary. Experimental results have demonstrated its effectiveness and performance gains in terms of productivity and data conversion speed. BinTag can be used in both memory and secondary storage systems.